Black Wood cover art

Black Wood

Banktoun, Book 1

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Black Wood

By: SJI Holliday
Narrated by: Angus King
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About this listen

A face from the past. A secret best left buried.

When Gareth Maloney walks into Jo's bookshop in the sleepy Scottish town of Banktoun, the life she thought she'd rebuilt starts to unravel. Because Jo recognises this man. The man who attacked her and her friend Claire, all those years ago, leaving Claire paralysed, and Jo tortured by the memories, unable to forgive herself for what happened. A desperate Jo turns to her friend, local policeman, Sergeant Davie Gray. The man she met after the attack. The kind, caring man who had vowed to look out for her since her mother's death. But he doesn't believe her. As Jo battles her demons, a masked man is attacking young girls on the old railway track. Convinced it is connected to Maloney's return, Jo takes matters into her own hands.

With devastating consequences.

©2015 Susi Holliday (P)2025 Susi Holliday Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense

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Listener received this title free

I've read several books by Susi Holliday so had high hopes for this one. The opening chapter totally grabbed me but for the next few chapters I felt a bit confused about which characters POV I was listening to especially with the different timelines, and I didn't really start to enjoy it until about halfway through. I did love the small town setting where everyone knows everyone else, and I really really wanted to know just what happened in those dark creepy woods. But unfortunately I was disappointed by the ending, which seemed rushed.

The book is read by one of my favourite narrators, Angus King, and as usual he did a great job. But I can't help feeling a female narrator would have been better for this book as the two main characters are female.

A bit disappointing

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Listener received this title free

When I first started listening to this I didn’t realise I had already read it a few years ago. I think the reason being that I did not read it with a “Scottish” accent. It was I think Chapter five before it was mentioned that the book was set in Scotland. Being deaf I struggle with accents and this made the audio book more difficult for me to listen to.

Listening to the book did not majorly change my view of the book from those years ago. I still found there were a lot of characters and it took a good while to work out who they all were and how they were involved. There were, in my opinion, no redeeming features of any of the characters, they were all very unlikeable. However I do feel that some of the characters could have been developed more.

There story was slow to get going but did improve although the “twist” was no surprise to me

I believe this was the author’s debut novel and I’m please to say her books have greatly improved in my opinion and I will listen to and/read the other two in the series.

Good story

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